Getting the perfect OTS for your OOH Campaign

Reach, Frequency and OTS is new to the Indian OoH Advertising industry. And there’s a dichotomy of what’s the perfect OTS to work with. As each OoH professional is still on the early learning curve on how to read the data and the best way to improvise the campaigns’ OTS and the right Frequency, maybe its a good time for senior media professionals to come forward and help. From my limited learning I am providing the various “Beliefs” and “Theories” propagated over the period of time.

RECENCY PLANNING: “Reach don’t Teach”, Erwin Ephron created this concept with the understanding of media-math relationship between advertising Frequency and Impact. He argued that advertising should Reach as many people as possible with the budget available and close to the purchase occasion. Rather than trying to hit them over the head with repeated frequency until they succumb to the offer.?

EFFECTIVE FREQUENY:?Persuasion Theorists from Media Houses and Agencies advocated repeated exposures, finally coming up with Effective Frequency. Meant audiences can be persuaded with repeated exposures to become potential consumers. Michael J. Naples’ moderate “Three Hit Theory” is still practised today, and the recommended number sits at an average of 3+ frequency.

SINGLE EXPOSURE: Rarely single source data (where the sample was both the viewer and consumer) was used in understanding media consumption and its impact. The research by McDonald, Wood and Philip Jones (1900’) revealed even a single exposure to a larger pool of potential buyer was more substantial than a single audience seeing the ad a 2nd, 3rd, 4th, nth time. They not only concluded that a single exposure was sufficient to elicit a purchase.

“Measuring the advertising response function (Taylor 2010)” Chart, shows the greatest uplift in sales propensity resulted from the first exposure, with a further increase surely, but at a decreasing rate for all additional exposures.?

Peter?Petermann, in his book Marke und Ged?chtnis (2021) mentioned brands with a high awareness and high market share, have more stable memories. During the 2020 corona pandemic, despite a temporary advertising freeze, the brands that had high level of TOM Awareness little changed in their market shares. The research by KANTAR assumes that a temporary advertising halt of up to 6 months does not usually doesn’t diminish typical brand KPIs - provided the brand remains visible and available (KANTAR 2020).

ADSTOCK & HALF-LIFE: Finally, the Simon Broadbent’s Adstock (or Advertising Carry Over) Model. The underlying theory behind Adstock is that marketing exposures does build awareness.?And that awareness doesn’t disappear right after the consumers see the ad but rather remains in their memory.?Memory decays over the weeks and this decay effect can be mathematically modelled and is usually expressed in terms of the ‘half-life’ of the advertising. A "two-week half-life" means that it takes two weeks for half the awareness effect of that advertising to be gone. Just as each radioactive element has its own half-life. Industry practitioners typically report complete decay between 4–5 weeks, depending on the category. Therefore, the half-life would be between 2-2.5 weeks. Like the average for FMCG Brands sits somewhere at 2.5 weeks.

With the half-life comes the theory of “carry over effect”. Means that during half-life period if the advertising pressure is removed, the residual awareness effect would remain the same as it would have been with advertising pressure being carried for the entire period of decay process. But there’s a lot of debate going on with the “Carry over Effect”

So, which one to follow? Is the big question. I would appreciate comments and expert advise on this. This will help the Indian OoH professionals, because it is very new to them and is a WIP. But it is important for them to learn fast enough to compete against the mainstream. Indian Outdoor Industry needs it rightful share in the business.

Here is the result of a 23 billboard campaign for a month that generated a Average Frequency of 4.99.

On the first day itself a Unique Reach of 32,300 and Impression of 71,000 was generated providing a Frequency of 2.2. Which clearly states that in OOH Outdoor Advertising controlling Frequency within 3+ will be difficult. And that should not be considered as a wastage at all. Therefore using the Adstock Model, is probably the right strategy for OOH Media Planning to limit over exposure.